Somewhere Under The Rainbow
I like chard.
Yes, I like the taste of it, but moreover I really just like the way it looks in the garden. Healthy chard leaves are broad and waxy with full-bodied color and interesting contrast between the green leaves and the veins/stems. Individually, I’ve planted the appropriately named “Fordhook Giant” with the whitish stems along the Ruby Red variety.
But the grab-bag “Rainbow” packages offer some of the prettiest plants. Yellow, orange, peach, white, red, these group together nicely until you can no longer resist and start harvesting. There isn’t actually a “rainbow” variety, these are all separately grown by color then the seeds are mixed for sale.
(click to zoom)
This patch was almost abandoned when sprouting due to heavy slug attacks but eventually they relented. We can see this little patch from the sunroom and as pretty as it might be, it is harvest time. Even though this is one of the front “herb” beds on the daily drip irrigation cycle, the intense sun and heat of July in Georgia will be too much for it in this location. Besides, the volunteer Dill that has come up among and adjacent to it is ready to own the location.
Ask For A Refund?
For the first time, I planted some Asian “yard long beans” this spring. I read than they should be harvested when the diameter are about that of a pencil, so after dinner this evening I picked the largest three, all approximately pencil thickness.
What a ripoff. These are only two feet at best. 😉
Seriously, I’m sure gardeners who are only familiar with traditional “western” pole beans shared my infatuation with the novelty of having 6 or 7 feet worth of beans to chop up after only harvesting three.
I understand that these are more suited for stir-fry/saute vs steaming/boiling, so tommorrow I’ll give it a shot @ dinner.
More here if this is a novelty to you as well:
Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis
And
Raspberry Bloody Raspberry
I posted earlier than we have our first harvest of raspberries this month on last year’s canes (type = Heritage).
I like to leave these raspberries on the bush as long as possible in order to harvest @ max sweetness. This is all fine as long as you pick twice a day, a thorough one in the morning and a second “clean up” pick in the evening. This works if the schedule is kept diligently, especially when riding the crest of the harvest wave when everything seems to be ripening at the same time.
Saturday, I didn’t pick twice; the evening pick just didn’t happen for some reason. Honestly I don’t recall for sure that much of a morning pick took place. (Too distracted trying to finish the last of the storm damage repairs).
Wow, what a mistake…
This morning I paid for it as I pulled lots of very juicy berries off of the brambles; a large portion were perfect, many were a little too ripe but still OK if used immediately, but some were just plain nasty. The bad ones had peaked and not fallen, and nature was consuming them quickly. By nature I mean gnats, ants, earwigs and even some general rot, the type that grows gray-blackish fuzz (barf). (No pictures, you’re welcome.)
So yesterday I did a thorough “clean up and recovery” harvest, where anything edible was picked and the rankest ones were removed and disposed of as much as possible. My plan was to freeze the harvest immediately but I wasn’t certain I had avoided all the bad ones, so I dumped the juicy pile out on wax paper and sorted them accordingly; there were a couple dozen that I had missed that had the potential of ruining the whole lot if not removed.
Instead of freezing, I decided to plunge right in and make some jam with these and by dinner we had a few little jars of some spectacularly delicious jam processed. (Did you know fresh jam is good on ice cream and also on brownies? I have this on the authority of none other than Mrs cohutt.)
I have to be more diligent as the harvest wanes; it was NOT pleasant to toss all those wasted and rotting berries.
Basil Cross Volunteer
This little guy is a volunteer that has appeared at the edge of our patio. Last year we had a couple of large basil plants next to this spot; I believe Large Leaf Italian and Genovese. Across the patio a fairly nice specimen of Opal was thriving in a pot of Thyme.
My guess is that this is what results when the bumble bees stop by the opal and then move over to the large leafed plant.
This has earned its place for a couple reasons.
First, it is a volunteer. (I leave just about all volunteers where they spring up, including basil, arugula, and cilantro. Why not, they have shown themselves to be hardy and healthy without any tending or prep by me.)
Second, it is a freak and freaks/mutants are always welcome behind the fence. 🙂
This is what opal looks like as it starts to get a useful size:
June
June things
Garlic harvested
Main Shallot beds are still a couple weeks out I believe:
Raspberries appeared
And Coneflowers still distract me from garden chores
Remember This One?
So do you remember this one?
This “Zombie Celery” post will catch you up if you don’t.
After it grew a little more and roots appeared underneath, I followed through and planted it in the corner of a bed next to the biggest mass of parsley.
It wasn’t long before the parsley overtook it and there is sat for two months, blending in well enough for me to pretty much forget about it.
Well, the parsley jungle was recently whacked back into submission and to my surprise a nice looking little celery plant was coming along just fine in the spot where I buried the base:
I don’t expect that this is the most robust celery bundle the world has ever seen.
(Well, since I have never actually seen celery while it is still “on the stump”, I have no idea whether this is a normal plant or not.)
SARCASM [ON]
Regardless, I will revel my apparent success in cheating Kroger out of $1.00 worth of celery using nothing but my cunning cheapness. You will all admire my prize in a most envious state, no? Martha Stewart and her production crew should be knocking on my garden gate at any moment.
SARCASM [OFF]
Or maybe not. 😉
Lazy Post
Mostly pics. What can I say?
(All can be expanded with a click)
Rainbow Chard, an odd elephant garlic sprout and bloom-less Carnations
Basil…. The BEST Basil.
Leek blossom…
Blackberry, Redberry, Fleshberry?
Worried Mothers
This is the time of year that brings regular “test flights” behind the fence. Baby birds have morphed into the “in between” stage of maturity that only lasts 1/2 of one day; the one where mother has to lure them out of the nest with food in order to let them know it is time to fly.
Mother birds communicate with short, steady and low chirps that are only heard on this one day for each brood; I’m probably imagining it but there seems to be an unusual level of patience in their delivery. Nothing alerting, nothing frantic, no warning tone to it, just the equivalent of one of us coaxing our child to jump off of a diving board “into the deep end” to us for the first time….
The other day I heard this plump mother Jay emitting the “motherly chirp” from a low branch of the massive Pecan tree shading Lizzies. Most readers know Blue Jays, as typically they are the loudest and most obnoxious “song bird” that we encounter in and over our yards. This was most definitely quite “Un-Jay” in its tone.
Mother Jay, what are you doing?
As I moved closer she stopped and the faint responsive plea that I thought I heard ceased as well. Well, I had the camera and was curious, so of course I investigated further, poking my head into the large honeysuckle bush beneath her. Mother Jay remained clammed up and the response that had come from the area of the bush was no more. After I stepped back to watch from across the lawn mother resumed; on the second or third chirp I heard the response again and peeked into the bush again from a different angle. (Both went silent immediately when I took the first step closer.)
There I found junior frozen still, trying his best to look like a leaf.
Like all of them on their first flight, he looked too young to be out, so of course I worried that he had fallen from the nest a day or two early. I texted mrs cohutt and asked her not to let any poodles or kittehs out for a while and retreated to the far side of the yard to watch. Mother Jay resumed the coaxing tone and within a couple of minutes baby Jay had clumsily flutter-stumbled to the nearby wire fence. Another 20 minutes and his skills and confidence had risen to the point that he was in the lower “canopy” branches above my neighbor’s thicket err… I mean landscape….. and was safely above the dangerous ground level zone.
While mother Jay was amazingly quiet and restrained during this episode (she never left the pecan tree to dive bomb or distract me), she was back to her obnoxious self within 48 hours.
… …
(Click to enlarge)
Behind cohutt's fence 